5 December 2018 – Master of Science in Business Analytics (MSBA) students Aditya Gupta and Harshil Parashar won the first prize at the Maybank Kim Eng (MKE) Hackfest Finals on 8 November 2018.
Aditya and Harshil beat six other teams to win a $3,000 cash prize and an internship opportunity with the bank. The Hackfest, organised by MKE and the NUS Smart Systems Institute, is an innovation challenge aimed at improving the bank’s digital assets. Teams were tasked to develop innovative solutions to increase customer engagement on MKE’s mobile application. A total of 13 groups, ranging from students from local universities to early start-up founders, competed in the month-long competition.
The MSBA team presented a solution to improve both customer experience and the bank’s financial products, instead of focusing on just the user’s experience. They included a customer engagement based gamification system, AI-driven financial products, and a user interface to provide customers with a seamless and engaging product experience. The team believes that their holistic approach to increase customer engagement gave them the edge over their competition.
“We looked at the problem from all angles and our solution reflected our thoroughness and strong understanding of customer psychology in the FinTech market,” said Harshil, on behalf of his team. “Our objective was to provide a practical business solution to MKE, which can be implemented by the company and had a real business impact.”
“We were really thrilled when our team name was announced at the end. The presentations from all the other teams were top notch and contained some amazing ideas. While we were confident in our project, it was an amazing experience to be selected as the best from an elite group of projects,” Harshil added.
Other mention:
NUS Smart Systems Institute, 16 November 2018
Assistant Professor Yair Zick: Ethics in Artificial Intelligence